Efficient multilayer shallow-water simulation system based on GPUs

Abstract

The computational simulation of shallow stratified fluids is a very active research topic because these types of systems are very common in a variety of natural environments. The simulation of such systems can be modelled using multilayer shallow-water equations but do impose important computational requisites especially when applied to large domains. General Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) has become a vivid research field due to the arrival of massively parallel hardware platforms (based on graphics cards) and adequate pro- gramming frameworks which have allowed important speed-up factors with respect to not only sequential but also parallel CPU based simulation systems. In this work we present a proposal for the simulation of shallow stratified fluids with an arbitrary number of layers using GPUs. The designed system does fully adapt to the many-core architecture of modern GPUs and several experiments have been carried out to illustrate its scalability and behavior on different GPU models. We propose a new elaborated 3D computational scheme for an underlying 2D mathematical model. This scheme allowed implementing a system capable of handling an arbitrary number of layers. The system adds no overhead when used for two-layer scenarios, compared to an existing 2D system specifically designed for just two layers. Our proposal is aimed at creating a GPU-based computational scheme suitable for the simulation of multilayer large-scale real-world scenarios.